huju: “Yiddish is unknown – unknown – to the many Mizrachi Jews I know… It predominated in Central and Eastern Europe, which is hardly the whole world.”
Ashkenazim represented 90% of prewar world Jewry. And Yiddish is the international language of that 90%.
“I can understand the romantic and nostalgic attachment to Yiddish among many Ashkenazim, but that by itself will not maintain Yiddish as a living language.”
Yiddish is hardly in danger. It is a living, vibrant and growing language spoken by millions of Jews the world over. For many hundreds of thousands of them, and the largest proportion of Yiddish speakers, it is their first language learnt from infanthood and childhood on, and used as their primary day to day language at home, at school, on the street and at work.
There are some places in the United States, Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom and in Europe that if you landed as an alien on the continent there for the first time you’d almost swear you must’ve landed in some Yiddish-speaking country where it was the official national language.
“There are great literary and scholarly works in Yiddish, but if they are not carefully translated into English or other language widely spoken by Jews and scholars, those Yiddish works will wither on the Yiddishe vine.”
The junk secular literature you speak of is already a forgotten relic. But no need to fret. Far more additional religious based Yiddish literature is being churned out every year.